Lahore master plan 2050 proposes penalties to regularise illegal housing schemes

The Lahore Division Master Plan-2050 is likely to recommend heavy penalties and land-use conversion fees before illegal housing schemes built on green areas that later fell within brown areas can be regularised, Dawn reported, citing what it had learnt of the draft.

According to the report, regularising such schemes would also depend on decisions taken and approval given by the government, meaning no development would become legal automatically through the plan itself.

Schemes that still stand on land classified as green would remain illegal and would not be regularised under the recommendations, Dawn said, drawing a line between developments whose land-use classification later changed and those whose did not.

In land-use planning, green areas are land reserved for agriculture, open space or environmental protection, while brown areas are those designated for urban development. The recommendation appears to turn on when a scheme was built relative to that designation.

Dawn reported that homes in many of these housing schemes and land subdivisions were built rapidly by plot owners, leaving large built-up populations inside areas whose planning status is disputed or unapproved.

The report did not give the size of the penalties or conversion fees proposed, the number of schemes affected, or a deadline for the government to act, and no provincial minister or planning official was quoted. Dawn described the measures as likely features of the plan rather than approved policy, so the terms could change before any formal adoption.

Illegal housing schemes, sold to buyers without the layout approvals required under planning rules, have been a recurring problem in Lahore and the districts around it, leaving residents without clear title while civic agencies struggle to extend water, sewerage and road connections to them.

Any regularisation would have to be ordered by the provincial government, which has not publicly commented on the draft recommendations, according to Dawn's account.